With The Compliments Of The Complementary Sector

The complementary sector has completed the drafting of its complementary demands to be incorporated into the tourism law. With the aid of the Chamber of Commerce, these complementary demands will be dispatched forthwith (after Monday anyway) together no doubt with a pleasant note attached, offering the tourism ministry all the complementary sector's best compliments for the end of the tourism season.

In case you need a definition once again, here it is. The complementary sector is anything in a tourism style which isn't a hotel. It is the "them" of the us and them of the tourism industry. Or is it the "us"? Either would do, I suppose. As such, it is therefore bars, restaurants, clubs, attractions and anything else it might wish to complement itself with.

The complementary sector will doubtless be complimenting itself on a jolly good list of demands. They had been well signalled, and I have helped to signal them. Much though it will sound repetitious, it is probably worth repeating what they are and identifying what has since been added.

There are two aspects. One has to do with so-called secondary activities that hotels will be allowed to engage in; the other concerns all-inclusives. With regard to the latter, the complementary sector is persisting with its pointless demand that a hotel has to have a minimum of three stars in order to offer all-inclusive; it is pointless as there are so few hotels with fewer than three stars and they are meant to be phased out in any event. Less pointless is to try and stop the practice of the day's all-inclusive rate that some hotels offer. A minimum of three days stay is being called for in order that a guest can qualify for all-inclusive.

There is also a reminder that hotels will have to prevent guests leaving the premises with food and drink (a specific provision in the tourism law). While this is also pointless as it will make little or no difference in generating more business for bars and restaurants, the complementary sector is keen to ensure that if hotels fail to prevent guests taking some carry-outs they will get hammered with the fines that are stipulated under the law (and they fall into the category with the maximum sanction).

I am still at a loss to know how this measure is going to work in practice. What are the hotels to do? Man the exits with heavy security? Call the police if Joe All-Inclusive decides to go walkabout with a plastic glass of watered-down foaming lager? Make a citizen's arrest if Josephine All-Inclusive heads off to the beach with a soggy pizza shoved in her bikini top? It all sounds like more trouble than it's worth, and trouble one can well envisage when Joe All-Inclusive, tanked up on his lager, gives security a smack in the gob for trying to prevent him leaving the premises with plastic glass in hand.

The all-inclusive demands amount to very little, and as there is very little the complementary sector can do about all-inclusives, this isn't altogether surprising. But then there are the secondary activities, the likes of discos, restaurants open to anyone, i.e. not just to hotel guests. There is more for the complementary sector to get its teeth into here. It wants to ensure that these activities are only available when the hotel is actually open, so there would be no discos or restaurants in winter. It also wants to ensure that access to these secondary activities requires people to pass through hotel receptions. And why would they want them to do this?

Well, I can think of one reason, and it has Mallorca Rocks written all over it. The complementary sector also wants to limit the number of people who could attend a secondary activity event to 150% of the total number of hotel places. Put this together with entrance only through reception, and you come up with Mallorca Rocks or equivalents. A limit of numbers as is being demanded would make concerts less viable, while insisting that there is no separate entrance would lead to a logistical nightmare.

These demands sound as though they are a rewind to the objections raised against Mallorca Rocks and the discovery by the tourism ministry, once Carlos Delgado had got his feet under the ministerial table, that it could indeed permit concerts at the hotel despite it previously saying that it couldn't. There are attempts to settle some old scores, one fancies, and one also fancies they won't be settled in favour of the complementary sector.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.